Beyond Design Guidelines: Becoming a System

Guidelines and a component catalog are essential parts of a design system, but they are not themselves the design system.

Principles and standards solve problems in decision-making and communication.

• What actually slows work is not a situation with a clearly right and wrong answer, but “an argument between valid answers that cannot be decided because there is no policy or standard.”

Named slots, and simplifying slots.

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Core, Clay, and Mold provide different degrees of flexibility and extensibility. The important part is preserving overall consistency while reducing decision fatigue at each level.